Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire Read Online Free PDF

from ho to girl. “He keeps a lot of cash in his safe. I think he’s hiding it from the IRS. It was part of some payoff kind of thing for—”
“How much?” Reebok interrupted.
    “Maybe fifty, maybe a hundred thousand dollars. It is quite a lot of money, isn’t it? I never really thought about it much before . . . ”
    “That place kind of rundown, don’t look like anybody in there doing that good.”
    “The recession killed two of the businesses that were there, and it’s a little place and Avery’s the only one left and he owns the building and he’s gonna renovate—he’s really just incredibly smart about those things, he always has these great plans for—”
    “Damn. Shut the fuck up about the man!” Reebok snarled. “Motherfucker!”
    “Fine, but just remember we can’t go in there shooting because I don’t want Avery to get hurt—”
    “Ho, what the fuck you talkin’ about—we step where we want, we got the motherfuckin’ guns—”
    “You need me. I know the combination to the safe.”
    Reebok goes tense in the backseat and shoves his gun at her. “And I know how to use this piece right here, you fuckin’ whitetail bitch!”
    “Then shoot me,” she says, shrugging, surprising herself again. But meaning it. She doesn’t care that much, really. Velma has Avery and nothing matters except Avery. That’s what people don’t understand. Avery belongs to her, and he is the cornerstone, and he is Man and she is Woman, and that’s that, and people should understand it. “I really don’t care that much,” she goes on. “Torture me. Kill me. I’m not going to do it unless we do it my way.”
    The muscles in VJ’s jaw bunch up. He points the gun at her face.
    She looks into VJ’s eyes. “Do it. Kill me. Throw away the money.”
    VJ looks at her for a full ten seconds. Then he lowers his gun and reaches into the back, and pushes Reebok’s gun down.
    Right on the desk. He was doing it to her right on the desk, and he was telling her he loved her. He had her legs spread, her bony knees in his big, rough hands, and he had his pants down around his ankles, and there were zits on her thighs, she was wearing some kind of hooker costume, and . . .
    He was telling her he loved her.
    Then Avery’s head snapped around to look at them, his mouth open and gasping with effort, his face mottled, forehead drippy, and he blinked at them. “She locked the office door . . . ” Kind of blurting it. Then he focused on Barbara and realized she must have copied the keys.
    Then—she can see it in his face—he realizes he’s standing there with his pants down and his penis in Velma, who’s propped on a desk with her legs spread, and two strange black guys are standing behind Barbara staring at him over her shoulder.
    “Jesus Christ Mary Mother of God” is what he says next as he pulls out his penis and grabs his pants, and Velma opens her eyes and sees Barbara and Reebok and VJ and screams.
    Velma scrambles off the desk, hunching down behind it. Avery hits the silent alarm button, but it doesn’t work; Barbara switched it off.
    When Barbara was a little girl in Florida, she witnessed a hurricane. She was staying at her granddad’s orange farm. Her grandma kept chickens, and Barbara looked through a knothole in the wall of the storm shelter and saw a chicken spreading its wings and being caught by the wind and the chicken was lifted into the sky and it disappeared up there, in the boiling air. Barbara feels now like there’s a big wind behind her, pushing her into the room, only the wind is inside her, and she does what it wants to do, and it’s carrying her around the room, like a tornado’s whirling, carrying her around and around the desk, and it’s howling out of her: “That’s how she traps you, Avery! That’s how she did it and she’s dressed like a hooker and that’s completely right because she is a whore, she’s a WHORE who’s trapped you with her cunt and she is an evil, evil